Business

Colorado to show its innovative side at COIN summit

Mark Sirangelo, the state's chief innovation officer and head of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems division, poses inside a fiberglass mock-up of the company's Dream Chaser space plane in 2011. "The vision is to make Colorado the most innovative state in the nation," Sirangelo said of the Colorado Innovation Network. (Karl Gehring, Denver Post file)

"The vision is to make Colorado the most innovative state in the nation," said Mark Sirangelo, the state's chief innovation officer and head of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems division.

On the surface, the topics covered at this year's invitation-only summit seem divergent. The first session on Tuesday is about the "Internet of Things." Discussions that follow address global innovation hubs, improving government, the neuroscience of creativity and crowdfunding.

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They aren't as disjointed as it might seem on the surface, said Michelle Hadwiger, who is COIN's director when she isn't overseeing business development at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

"Redefining connection is the theme this year," she said.

COIN is modeled after the Kellogg Innovation Network, developed at Northwestern University, Hadwiger said. But unlike the other innovation offerings out there, typically run by universities or think tanks, COIN is the first to come out of a state government with private funding, she said.

Corporate sponsors, who chipped in $300,000 for the first summit, are contributing about $900,000 this year. And what started as a Colorado-centric gathering will bring in speakers and attendees from nine states and eight countries.

"Colorado is building itself as a growing innovation and creativity center, and the awareness to its activities in the space has been growing quite dramatically in the last few years," said Uri Adoni, a partner with Jerusalem Venture Partners, who is traveling from Israel to attend.

Also among the 275 participants this year are high-profile corporate executives. Jeff Immelt, CEO and chairman of General Electric Co., will provide one keynote speech, and Safra Catz, president and chief financial officer of Oracle, another.

Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek was the keynote speaker last summer and before him Coca Cola CEO Muhtar Kent.

"They agreed to come to Colorado because they and their companies sensed something was happening here," said Ajay Menon, dean of Colorado State University's College of Business, and the state's previous chief innovation officer. "We are catching their attention, and this could be a great economic development opportunity."

Part of the summit's value comes from the interactions that participants have outside the panels. And the hope is that by hosting, Colorado will further strengthen its reputation as a place where innovation takes place, Sirangelo said.

Its early momentum aside, COIN's true test will come in its ability to outlast turnover in the governor's office — something previous state economic development initiatives have failed to do.

"It needs to survive multiple administrations so that citizens of Colorado will take ownership," said Menon.

Gov. Bill Owens, who took office in 1999, placed a heavy emphasis on information technology, touting a " convergence corridor" and naming Marc Holtzman as his technology secretary.

One by one, the tech bust killed off many of the state's most promising technology and telecom firms, destroying tens of thousands of jobs in the process.

Not long after, the recession caused commodity prices to crater and domestic oil and gas production surged, reducing the momentum behind going green.

The longer the U.S. economy stays stuck in a low-growth trajectory, the more desperate the push becomes to find the next new thing. But lesser-known innovations are taking placing all the time, obscured by the buzz in certain technologies — 3-D printing anyone.

Take cow's milk, which humans first started drinking some time in the Stone Age. A handful of Colorado companies, including WhiteWave Foods, have disrupted that niche by creating and marketing popular alternatives like soy and almond milk, said Sirangelo, whose firm is working on a replacement for NASA's space shuttle.

Both represent innovation. Sirangelo said COIN plans to create smaller, more focused innovation gatherings for each of the 14 industries the state has identified as important.

The ideas out of those smaller gatherings will then feed into the larger summit, which backers hope will continue to draw more attention nationally and internationally.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.